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Saturday, March 31, 2007

I've been a fan of Robert Jordan's WoT series since I wandered into the local Walden's Bookstore years ago and found them handing out *FREE* copies of the first half of Book One. Smart marketing there. Now, 11 books and nearly 10,000 pages later (which Jason tells me works out to and estimated 2½ million words), I'm still hooked on it.

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KoD is, as always, a superb narrative of the various characters in Robert Jordan's world. If there is a criticism, it is the usual one - you can tear out the first half of the book and not miss any plot-advancement. Elayne's been trying to win the Lion Throne of Andor for a couple books now; she still is. Mat's been trying to figure out women (specifically, Tuon) for two books; he still is. Perrin has been planning how to rescue his wife Faile for three books at least; he still is. About the only "progress" to the story in the first half of KoD is following Egwene as she sets about to undermine Elaida in the White Tower, all while being spanked thrice daily in an attempt to rehabilitate her.

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But if the first half drags with regards to the overall plot, the second half more than makes up for it. All of the above sub-plots are resolved (except for Egwene/Elaida); and Rand withstands yet another attack of 10-gazillion trollocs (how DO they always seem to know where he is?), only to lose his left hand in an encounter with Semirhage. To boot, there is reason to believe Moiraine will make an encore appearance in the next Book.

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Speaking of which, we are promised by Robert Jordan that the next book (tentatively titled "A Memory of Light") will finish the saga, even if it takes 1500 pages. Alas, RJ has some very serious health problems at present (see the Wikipedia entry on him for details), which makes the slated release date (early 2009) for aMoL quite problematic. It has long been my fear that RJ might "pull a Tolkien" and shuffle off this mortal coil before finishing WoT.

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So we'll give KoD a B+ rating, taking off points mostly for the plot-dragging over its first half. It's still an excellent book.